The Day Happy Died: New Year To Bring End To Happy Hours In Utah

The New Year brings a host of new laws that kick in on the first. For citizens in Utah, the New Year will bring an end to Happy Hours. That’s right, the heavily Mormon state has continued its harassment of citizens who drink and outlawed “drink specials.”

Under Utah’s SB 314, it will now be a crime to offer drink specials. In addition, SB 314 bans minikegs and ties the number of liquor licenses to population quotas and public-safety officers.

Utah has a long history of harassing people who drink in contradiction to the teachings of the Church of Latter Day Saints, including the imposition of so called “Zion Curtains” at bars. This rather transparent sectarian policy does not seem to bother politicians who claim to be for small government and libertarian values. It also contradict the desire of the state to pull in tourists and change the image of the state as controlled by the LDS leadership.

31 thoughts on “The Day Happy Died: New Year To Bring End To Happy Hours In Utah”

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[…] Utah now only allows UNHAPPY hours. – From the state that limits how many drinks you can order per trip to the bar comes a new restriction. No happy hours or drink specials – Now you can pay full price one drink at a time. […]

For the record…you ALSO can’t buy a cup of coffee to go with your “best apple fritter in the world” at the bakery in Manti, Ut. It’s that Mormon thing again. You can stuff yourself with indecent amounts of fat and sugar but coffee is against the religion.

Once you figure the place out, ie; how to eat, drink and be merry, it’s a wonderful place to be.

In CA the law says, essentially, that a bar cannot offer “free” drinks, including two-for-one deals or complimentary cocktails with a dinner purchase. It is legal to offer reduced-price drinks (the typical “happy hour” pricing, for example) so long as the price charged does not undercut the wholesale price.

There is irony and humor all the way around this…if I recall the Volstead Act was also called the 18th Amendment….it Prohibited National Enforcement of the Federal Liquor Laws….Hence that is one of the reasons that its legal for a serviceperson to drink regardless of age on military installations… Utah was the last state that ratified the Blaine Amendment… which repealed the 18th…..Therefore it is left of to each state to designate or to establish liquor laws….the Feds still regulate but through other laws that are thought to be rationally related….

“When I went to Chicago during St. Patrick’s Day weekend, they will not serve drinks in glass glasses. It’s the law for some crazy reason that I cannot recall.”

They don’t serve to go drinks in New Orleans (at Mardi Gras or any other time) in glass glasses for the same reason – safety and clean up. A street full of stinky paper and plastic is bad enough, but a street full of broken glass? Is a street soon full of alcohol diluted blood. You’d need haz-mat teams to clean up the streets afterwards.